Lindsey Buckingham Breaks His Silence On Being Fired From Fleetwood Mac, Says Band ‘Lost Their Perspective’

By Brent Furdyk.
12 May 2018 12:58 PM

Lindsey Buckingham is finally speaking out about being fired from Fleetwood Mac after the band announced it was going on tour without its longtime guitarist, singer and songwriter, replacing him with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn.

Appearing onstage at a California fundraiser for Democratic congressional candidate Mike Levin on Friday night, Buckingham broke his silence about the band telling him to go his own way.

“It’s been an interesting time on a lot of levels,” Buckingham told the audience at the event. “For me, personally, probably some of you know that for the last three months I have sadly taken leave of my band of 43 years, Fleetwood Mac. This was not something that was really my doing or my choice.”

Buckingham continued: “I think what you would say is that there were factions within the band that had lost their perspective. The point is that they’d lost their perspective. What that did was to harm — and this is the only thing I’m really sad about, the rest of it becomes an opportunity — it harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build, and that legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill one’s higher truth and one’s higher destiny.”

Last month, Fleetwood Mac collectively issued a statement announcing plans to tour without Buckingham, announcing that Campbell and Finn would take his place.

“We are thrilled to welcome the musical talents of the calibre of Mike Campbell and Neil Finn into the Mac family,” the members of the band said in a joint statement. “With Mike and Neil, we’ll be performing all the hits that the fans love, plus we’ll be surprising our audiences with some tracks from our historic catalogue of songs. Fleetwood Mac has always been a creative evolution. We look forward to honouring that spirit on this upcoming tour.”

“Words like ‘fired’ are ugly references as far as I’m concerned,” Fleetwood told Rolling Stone. “Not to hedge around, but we arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall. This was not a happy situation for us in terms of the logistics of a functioning band. To that purpose, we made a decision that we could not go on with him. Majority rules in term of what we need to do as a band and go forward.”